'It has to be done': can Reconstruction-era laws hold Trump and allies accountable?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In attempts to hold former president Donald Trump and his allies accountable for election subversion, attorneys are reaching back to laws created in the wake of the civil war in the 1860s.

Beyond Trump, too, lawsuits using these Reconstruction-era laws seek to enforce voting rights and prevent discrimination in modern-era elections.

The laws from this time period were designed, in part, to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the country and ensure that they did not yet again attempt to overthrow the government or pass laws to restrict newly freed Black citizens.

But the Reconstruction Congress created laws that were “flexible and responsive to modern-day threats”, making them applicable today and worth trying to enforce, said Jessica Marsden, an attorney with Protect Democracy, which has filed lawsuits using such laws.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/done-reconstruction-era-laws-hold-131518906.html

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Great article. Reconstruction is the issue, and it's never been a prominent subject

in very many college courses, nor from the article in law schools. There was no demand for it because most of the laws were never used. We'd likely not have good laws back then were it not for Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. He's likely the one who got the laws, set to expire in 1870, into 14A.

[BComplex]

2. Thanks for the info! It may be that we're still in the middle of the Civil War because the

Reconstruction legal issues were never made a part of the solution to what our society has faced, in the way of keeping millions of Black Americans subjugated or poor, or both. The things I've read about the 14th amendment make me think we're way behind on bringing forth the wisdom, much less the intent, of those laws.